


Those Who Return

by jenny_of_oldstones



Series: Mother & Son [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Family Drama, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-25 06:02:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16655578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: The day of Leandra Hawke's funeral, Garrett came home to find his mother standing at the top of the stairs.





	Those Who Return

The day of Leandra Hawke's funeral, Garrett came home to find his mother standing at the top of the stairs.

He didn't feel guilt, or fear, or any of the things you're supposed to feel when your very recently murdered mother comes back from the dead. He didn’t even warn Orana as she removed his cloak for him.

What he did do was pick up a candlestick and throw it at her.

To his mother's credit, her reflexes were pretty good for a ghost. She ducked, picked up her skirts and ran to her bedroom at the end of the hall. The door slammed shut behind her so hard that Orana screamed and clutched her heart as if she'd been shot with a crossbow bolt.

"Someone let a draft in," Hawke said, and sat down stiffly in his armchair in front of the fire. "Bring me a glass of wine, would you?”

 

* * *

 

Life at the Amell Estate returned to its normal pace. The black curtains were taken down, the letters of condolence were answered, and the mourning garb was folded and put back in its chest. The only difference was that the house was slightly colder than it had been before.

“Are you doing all right, messere?” asked Bodahn, one evening.

“I’m fine," Hawke, seated in front of the fireplace.

Bodahn studied him, wringing his hands. “You didn’t seem fine at the funeral.”

Hawke tried not to think about what he had done at the funeral. No one so far had been brave enough to bring it up, and the fact that it was being brought up now annoyed him.

“I’d prefer not to speak of it, Bodahn.”

The dwarf nodded. “Well, I just wanted to say that what happened to your mother was a terrible thing. Mistress Amell was always kind to me, and frankly I miss speaking to her. I want you to know that I’m here for you, Sandal and I both. Whatever you need.”

“I need quiet,” said Hawke.

“I see. There is one thing I wanted to ask you, though. What should we do about….about Mistress Amell’s room?”

Mother’s room had not been touched since her death. The door remained closed.

“I’ll go in there in my own time,” he said. “For the moment, leave it be.”

“All right, messere.”

The dwarf went back to the kitchen. On the second story landing, Leandra watched him go, and turned her dead gaze to her son.

Hawke ignored it. Eventually, his mother pushed back from the bannister and disappeared down the hallway, the floorboards creaking beneath her tread.

 

* * *

 

His mother didn’t quite seem to know what to do as a ghost.

As far as Hawke could tell, the primary thrill of the afterlife was wandering from room to room and knocking things over like a bored house cat. Bags of sugar spilled on their own, books fell from shelves, and strings of lutes were plucked as if by a phantom finger.

There were times when Hawke could convince himself that his mother was friendly spirit- a mischevious poltergeist lingering to have a bit of fun at her son's expense and exact a little motherly revenge for all the trouble he'd heaped upon her as a boy.

But the house remained cold.

Varric and Aveline commented on it when they came to visit.

“Yeesh.” Varric rubbed his arms. “It’s like a freezer in here.”

“It’s summer,” said Aveline, as if this might change something.

Hawke stood before them. He hadn’t bothered putting on clothes that day and was still in his pajamas. His two friends, shivering in the chill, exchanged glances.

“We thought you might want to come play Wicked Grace tonight,” said Aveline.

“Or, we could bring the game to you,” said Varric. “Fenris has been asking after you.”

There was a suggestive little inflection in that last sentence. 

“If he cared so much, he’d come visit,” said Hawke.

“You didn’t seem to want company,” said Varric. “I mean, after, you know.”

That was true, Hawke supposed. He had yelled at his friends to leave him alone when they had followed him out of the Chantry after the funeral. The servants had been instructed not to allow any guests into the house until recently, when the letters from his friends had become insufferable.

“Are you all right?” asked Varric.

“People keep asking me that question,” said Hawke. He walked back into the den and collapsed into his armchair.

“It’s just been awhile since we saw you,” said Varric. “Bodahn says you haven’t left the house in almost two weeks.”

“It’s not healthy to stay cooped up like this,” said Aveline. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

Hawke hadn’t. The last time he had, his mother had appeared behind him and almost given him a heart attack. He’d told Bodahn to throw drapes over all the mirrors in the house, and the dwarf, bless him, had not questioned it.

“We’re worried about you,” said Aveline. 

“Why don’t you let the gang come over? We can have dinner together,” said Varric. “Daisy has nearly perfected her pigeon stew.”

“I want to be alone," Hawke said.

“Hawke.” Aveline knelt down beside his chair. “About what happened at the funeral—”

“I don't want to talk about the funeral,” he snapped.

“Let me finish,” she said. “I know things were difficult between you and your mother, but she wouldn’t want you to suffer like this.”  

“Are you so certain?” asked Hawke.

“I’m not saying you can't be angry, but this can’t go on. You don’t bathe, you barely eat. You can’t keep punishing yourself like this.”  

Hawke drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. He hadn’t slept well in weeks. From the way Aveline angled her face away from him, he smelled. For some twisted reason, it felt good and just that he treat himself this way. 

But maybe his friernds were right. Maybe he was punishing the wrong person.

“I’m not ready for Wicked Grace,” he said, at last. “I’m going to be busy for the next few days.”

Aveline and Varric exchanged glances.

“Don’t worry,” he said, rubbing his beard. “I'll be doing a little housecleaning.”

 

* * *

 

Hawke ordered the servants to get rid of everything that had belonged to his mother. 

"Everything?" asked Bodahn. Orana stood beside him with a hand over her mouth.

"Everything," said Hawke, in a voice that brooked no argument. 

"What about Mistress Amell's bedroom?" asked Bodahn.

There was a pressure at the back of Hawke's head, as if the door at the top of the stairs willed him to turn around and look at it.

"Leave it be," said Hawke. "Everything else goes." 

The next few days were spent ridding the estate of every single trace of Leandra Hawke. What could not be sold was donated, and what could not be donated was thrown in the trash. Her perfumes and powders were gifted to the Arrenbergs. Her daffodils in the garden were yanked up and tossed into the rubbish bin. Her portrait was taken down off the mantle and thrown, unceremoniously, into the cellar. The walls were bare of the paintings she had purchased, the pantries emptied of her teacups and silverware.  

The house was peeled of the life and color Leandra had lovingly decorated it with, leaving it a barren tomb.

Hawke wandered the halls afterward. He found himself spinning around, trying to catch glimpse of his mother behind him, but she did not show herself.

The stairs did not creak. The books did not fall off the shelf. The ominous pressure that had suffocated the house for the past few weeks had drained away.

But the estate remained cold.

“Are you still here?” he asked the silent house.

No one answered.

Hawke rubbed his arms. Hesitantly, cautiously optimistic, he wrote a letter to Fenris. 

 

* * *

 

"Maker, I missed you." 

Fenris had his face buried in Hawke's neck. The way their bodies moulded together was like music. 

"I missed you as well," said Fenris. After hours of working off their frustrations, the elf had found himself back in his favored spot between Hawke's legs, languidly kissing his throat and face. "I'm sorry I did not visit you sooner." 

"It didn't exactly put out the welcome mat," said Hawke.

"Do you wish to speak of it?" asked Fenris.

"No," said Hawke.

"Hm." Fenris pulled a blanket over them both. "This cold is unnatural.”

“Probably,” said Hawke.

“You should summon a Templar from the Circle. It is entirely possible one of your enemies has cursed your mansion.”

“For the dread purpose of giving me a stuffy nose?” 

“Never underestimate the pettiness of cowards,” said Fenris.

Hawke stroked a hand down his back. It was unreal, having Fenris here in his bed, without having to worry about his mother coming home early from her errands and finding them like this. Those afternoons spent listening for his mother's footsteps had been a torment, and now that she was gone, some muscle deep inside of him had unclenched at last. 

And yet.

"Can I tell you something?" Hawke whispered. "Something that sounds insane?"

"Other than your usual insanity?" said Fenris. His teasing smile faded away at Hawke's silence. "What is it?" 

“I saw her."

“Who?” said Fenris.

“My mother. The day of the funeral, I saw her.”

“You mean you dreamed of her?” Fenris asked.

"No, I  _saw_  her. When I came home she was standing at the top of the stairs. I threw a candlestick at her and she ran into her room. The door slammed so hard behind her that Orana almost hit the roof."

Fenris sat up on one elbow and studied him.

“You don’t believe me,” said Hawke.

“I think you have suffered a great deal,” said Fenris.

“With all the evil in the world, is it so hard to believe in ghosts?”

“Souls that pass through the Veil do not return,” said Fenris, but here he hesitated. “You are correct though, that the world is full of evil magic. Your mother was murdered by some of it. It is entirely possible some spell is still at work in your house. Whatever magic is causing this unnatural cold may also have caused you to hallucinate your mother. Have you considered that?”

Hawke had. He supposed it possible there was some strange magic at play—either the work of a maleficar or some other enemy. But it didn’t feel right.

“If you had seen what I’ve seen, you would believe me,” said Hawke.

“The past few weeks have been difficult for you—”

“So I’m addle-minded?”

“That is not what I was going to say. I merely believe that, in a state of grief, the mind is more vulnerable to predations.”

"Better to believe in shadowy cabals," said Hawke drily, "than to believe my mother came back to torment me?"

"I doubt your mother had that much anger toward you."  

"My mother-" whispered Garrett, "-will never leave me alone."

Their breath was visible, despite the high sun of summer shining brightly outside the windows. 

“Hire a Templar,” said Fenris.

 

* * *

 

Hawke asked Merrill and Anders to inspect the house instead. The two mages went room to room, running their glowing hands along the walls and doors. They found no evidence of curses, hexes, or blood magic at play.

“But it certainly is creepy.” Merrill shivered in the foyer. “It’s like a demon is living here, only, you know, not.”

“There’s no explanation for it,” said Anders. “At least none I can find.”

"No theories at all?" asked Hawke.

"Oh, I have a few," said Merrill. "I wouldn't worry, though. Your house is probably just sitting on an underground river that's about to burst through the floor." 

Hawke paid them in food and sent them on their way. For some time afterward, things returned to normal at the Amell Estate.

Then the haunting began again.

 

* * *

 

It was different this time.

The first signs were familiar. Books that fell off shelves. Doors that slammed unexpectedly. A cask of ale sprang a leak in the cellar.

Then, one afternoon while Orana was playing the lute for them at lunch, a string broke and sliced her across the eye.

She would have lost her sight on that side, if not for an enchanted stone Sandal had produced. The girl was badly shaken, but healed quickly enough. 

A few days later an iron curtain rod fell from the wall and struck Bodahn on the head. 

The next day the mabari cut his paw to the bone on a piece of broken glass.

The worst came when Sandal fell down the stairs. The crash of it echoed around the house. They all came running, only to find Sandal sprawled in a pile of dirty laundry, whimpering and holding his head. The boy had, thankfully, only been concussed, but the mute terror on his face was terrible to behold.  

Hawke was the only one to hear the creak of floorboards upstairs, as of someone walking calmly away.

 

* * *

 

“Orana mentioned that there have been several accidents lately,” said Fenris. They sat at the dining room table, eating cold stew.

“Bodahn twisted his ankle yesterday,” said Hawke. “Turned it on a loose garden tile.”

“It is fortunate he did not break it.”

“Sandal’s still too frightened after his fall to leave his room. Orana had a scare yesterday when she went down in the cellar and the trap door slammed shut behind her. It was jammed, and she couldn’t budge it. She was screaming down there for over an hour, and none of us could hear her.”

“Surely she knew she would be found eventually.”

“She said she didn’t know why she was afraid. She said it was like there was someone down there in the dark with her.”

Fenris shook his head.

“I heard you asked the mages about the cold,” said Fenris.

“They didn’t find any curses or demons,” said Hawke.

“That they told you about.”

Hawke let out a sigh.

“I still think you should go to the Templars,” said Fenris.

“I don’t want Templars sniffing around my house where my friends visit,” said Hawke.

“They would be better equipped to recognize malignant magic and negate it.”

“I already had a blood mage and an abomination scour the house from cellar to attic. If they couldn’t find anything, it means there’s nothing here.”

Fenris set his spoon down. “Someone might be cursing you at a distance then.”

“The thing that’s cursing me is right here. And no, I’m not talking about you, I'm talking about—”

Hawke yanked the spoon out of his mouth. He spat, and something metal clinked on the tabletop. A silver sewing needle glittered in a spattering of stew.

“She’s trying to kill me.” Hawke threw down his napkin and stormed out of the dining room. He ran up the stairs to his mother’s room and flung open the door.

The temperature plummeted the moment he crossed the threshold. The room inside was pitch black. Hawke stood there shivering, trying to steady the pounding of his heart.

“I know you’re here,” he hissed. “Come out.”

Footsteps creaked on the steps. Hawke spun around, to find Fenris stepping into the room, the needle in hand.

“Hawke?”

“I’m fine.” Hawke rubbed his face. “I’m just….tired.”

Fenris rubbed his back. They stood side by side in the darkness, their breath visible from the dim light of the hall.

“You put too much pressure on yourself,” said Fenris.

“Sure,” said Hawke.

“It has only been a month,” said Fenris. “No one expects you to be stable during this time.”

"I suppose you're going to tell me that one of my servants accidentally dropped a needle into my dinner?"  

"What would be the alternative?" said Fenris. "Your mother is dead. You cannot keep tormenting yourself over her murder."  

"I don't," said Hawke. 

Fenris led him gently from the room. As Hawke closed the door behind them, he almost told the truth: that the thing he blamed himself for wasn't his mother's death.

The thing he blamed himself for were the thirty years that came before it.  

 

* * *

 

On the day of the funeral, the Revered Mother who presided over the rites asked if anyone wanted to speak about the life of Leandra Amell. Garrett had rose stiffly from his seat in the front row and went to stand beside his mother’s urn on the dais.

The Chantry had been packed that day. His mother’s murder had come as a shock to High Town society, drawing crowds of nobles who had never met her, yet dabbed at their cheeks daintily with silk handkerchiefs. His friends sat further back with the less monied crowd, alongside neighbors from Low Town and Fereldan refugees from Lothering.

Garrett had stood there, clutching the lectern with its open copy of the Chant, and cleared his throat.

“My mother always assumed she would grow old in Kirkwall,” he said. “Obviously, she was wrong. I failed to take care of her. I wasn’t vigilant enough, and now she’s gone.”

A few people shifted in their seats. 

“My mother,” he said, “had hopes for my brother and sister. Bethany was an apostate, but if she could find someone who accepted her, she might have had a happy life. Carver was a strong lad, and he already had prospects. But me?

“My father died when I was fifteen. After his death, my mother fell apart. She became catatonic. Bethany and Carver were children, and couldn’t help on the farm. We fell behind on our debts, and food became scarce. I had to take on unsavory work to keep us alive. By the time my mother came back to herself, I was no longer a son she could be proud of.”

He stared, unseeing, at her urn.

“She would look at me sometimes, at her son the scoundrel, with such disgust. I never told her all the terrible things I did to keep us alive, but I didn’t have to. She made the stories up in her head all the same. My father had been noble, kind, and compassionate. I was none of those things. I frightened her.”

Hawke swallowed.

“Her only consolation was that she had Bethany and Carver. They would give her grandchildren. A future. But then Bethany and Carver died. It was just the two of us. She would look at me sometimes, and I could see her thinking, why? Why of all my family, did it have to be you? Why not my gentle husband, or my sweet girl, or my brave boy? Why do I have to be trapped in my dotage with a monster like you?”

The Chantry was utterly silent. 

“In the days since her death, I’ve felt more relaxed than I have in years,” he said. “I’m glad she’s dead.”

He swept down from the podium. His cloak caught on the urn and toppled it off its stand. Garrett heard the crowd gasp and leap from their seats, but he was already walking fast down the aisle, his breaths coming short, his throat squeezed shut. Someone tried to catch his arm, and he brushed them off.

When he got home, he found his mother standing at the top of the stairs.

Where else would she be? There was never any hope of them being free from each other.

 

* * *

 

Hawke woke to the smell of smoke.

He bolted upright in bed. Fire danced on the covers. He threw them on the floor and sprang to his feet.

“Wake up!” he shouted. Fenris was up in an instant. The fire on the burning covers threw massive shadows on the wall, and in the confusion, it became apparent that there were three people in the room instead of two.

Leandra stood at the end of the bed with a candlestick in her hand. Her skin was flaky and black. Her eyes, burning like coals, fixed on her son. A stench of spoiled meat roiled off her, and with it a cloud of dread that turned Garrett’s bowels to water.

“Do you see her?” he called to Fenris.

Fenris didn’t answer. He was staring at Leandra in shock. A moment later, he grabbed his sword and swung it at her. Leandra wafted around the swing as if she was made of smoke. A croaking noise crept up her throat, and she touched Fenris on the shoulder.

Fenris’ eyes rolled up in his head. He collapsed on the floor in a heap.

“Fen—” Hawke moved for him, but his mother came around the bed. He backed up, the only thing between him and his mother now being the burning coverlets on the floor.

His mother dropped the burning candlestick into the bedding. She took a step toward him, and Hawke stepped back. His hands were sweeping, frantically, under his pillow. He came up with a knife and brandished it.

The knife turning red hot in his grasp, and he dropped it.

“Dammit!” Nothing left. He was cornered, and his mother was here, and there was nowhere left to run.

There was nowhere to run.

All the terror drained out of him, and in its place anger crept in.

“Maker, woman, couldn’t you just stay dead?” he said.

His mother hovered in front of him. A beetle crawled out of the moist webbing of her cheek and into a hole in her neck.

“When it really hit me that you were gone, I realized I was free. I could finally be my own man, without the weight of your disapproval. That’s probably how you would have felt about me, if our roles had been reversed. But you died first. I’m still here, and you’re not. I’m not glad you were murdered, mother, but I’m not sorry that you're dead.”

His mother took a step toward him.

“Go away,” he hissed.

She stepped closer again.

“Go away and let me live.”

She was so close he could already tell what she was going to do—she was going to wrap her dead hands around his throat and squeeze.

“I said—” Hawke wrapped his hands around her throat first. “Get back in your grave.”

She boiled in his hands. Her eyes ignited into twin flames. Her fingernails scratched at his face and tore the flesh to ribbons. He pushed her down, down, until her spine should have snapped, until her fingernails were at his eyes—

And then she collapsed into dust.

Hawke fell forward, rolling to avoid the burning bedsheets. A moment later, a blast of frost covered his back and put out the flames.

Merrill was standing in the doorway with her staff. A rumpled Bodahn stood beside her, his sleeping cap askew. Anders was a little ways behind, a bright and shining talisman raised above his head.

 

* * *

 

“So,” said Fenris. He held a dishcloth full of ice to his brow. “It was a demon.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” said Anders. They were all seated around the dining room table, tucking in to loaf of bread. “It was more like…a fragment. A piece of memory that lingered.”

“Sounds like a demon,” said Fenris.

“I honestly don’t know,” said Anders. “It didn’t feel like a demon. Whatever it was, it didn’t like being purged.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you two showed up when you did,” said Bodahn. “Messere Hawke would have been in a great deal of trouble if you hadn’t.”

“Yes,” said Fenris. He dropped the bag of ice to the table and gingerly pressed the bruise on his brow where he had hit the hardwood floor. “Quite a coincidence.”

“Oh for—we didn’t put the thing here,” said Anders.

“No, but you neither did you find it when you scoured the house,” said Fenris.

“We weren’t looking for the right thing,” said Merrill. She spread a generous heap of pumpkin butter over a slice of warm bread. “I thought there was a strange energy in the house, but it wasn’t until I did some reading that I realized a possibility we had missed. Once I did, I ran and got Anders before coming here.”

“That’s when we realized how much danger you were in,” said Anders.

“Because of my mother,” said Hawke.

They all looked at him. It was the first time he had spoken since they had retreated downstairs. His pajamas were singed from the fire, and his beard smelled of smoke. The cuts on his face had been healed over by Anders, and he was otherwise unhurt.

The house also was warmer than it had been all season. It was strange, after so many weeks of being bundled up, to now be sweating in the close dining room.

“The fragment most likely fed off your negative emotions,” said Anders. He reached forward and put his hand on Hawke’s, ignoring the sneer Fenris gave him. “It must have been terrifying to wake up to it like that.”

“It wasn’t the first time I saw her,” said Hawke. “The first time was the afternoon after the funeral.”

“What?” said Merrill. Her voice pitched in disbelief. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought she was a ghost. I thought she had come back to haunt me.”

There was an awkward silence. Hawke pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Thank you, everyone,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d be here if it wasn’t for you two. And thank you, Bodhan, for letting them in.”

“It’s a good thing Sandal’s a light sleeper,” said Bodahn. “Otherwise I would have slept right through them hammering on the door.”

“You’re welcome to stay the night,” said Hawke. “I dare say our guest rooms will be better than a walk in the dark through Low Town.”

Anders seemed unsure, but Merrill clapped her hands together. “Oh, can I take a bath in that big copper tub of yours?”

“Of course,” said Hawke. “Now, please excuse me.”

He shut the door to the dining room and started up the stairs. He was at the door to his mother’s bedroom when he heard the steps creak behind him.

Fenris was on the landing. His hair shone in the moonlight that threaded between two curtains. “Are you certain you wish to be alone?”

Garrett turned back to the closed door of his mother’s bedroom. “No.”

Fenris joined him at the door. Garrett turned the doorknob. The brass was warm under his hand.

Inside, he lit a candle. The bedroom was just as it had been before his mother had died. Her bedclothes were turned down. Her hairbrush was on the windowsill. The white lilies, now dry, black husks, had littered their petals on the floor.

Garrett sat down on the cushioned vanity bench. Fenris sat down beside him.

“I’m sorry I did not believe you,” he said.

“It’s fine,” said Garrett. “I wouldn’t have believed me either.”

“Still, I apologize. You suffered needlessly, and I let you do it alone.”

“I really thought it was her,” said Garrett. “I had been so secretly relieved when she died, that it made sense. Why wouldn’t she come back and haunt a terrible son like me? The son that gave her grief and made her life miserable.”

Garrett gazed around the room. His mother’s slippers were tucked under the bed, side by side. 

“I wish we had been kinder to each other,” he said. “But we weren’t, and I…” His throat tightened.

Fenris touched his shoulder. He offered neither admonishments nor condolences, and that in itself was a form of love.

 

* * *

 

The chill stayed gone from the house. Garrett eventually invited his friends back over for Wicked Grace. He and Bodahn cleaned out his mother’s bedroom one weekend, and donated her things to charity.

While clearing out his mother’s things, he found a diary of hers from when she was a girl. She had obviously left it behind when she ran away to Lothering, and then reclaimed it from the same hiding spot when she returned. It was strange, to read his mother’s thoughts on High Town society and the dashing apostate named Malcolm Hawke. It was the story of a happier life untouched by grief. It was a life he didn’t recognize. Garrett took the diary out into the garden, where Fenris was pruning the strawberries.

He sat down on a moss-covered bench, and there, under the warm sun, began to read.

 


End file.
